In U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,976,824; 5,030,327; and 5,332,476, several embodiments of a fluid distillation system are disclosed. For the most part, these embodiments provide effective operation and a reasonable yield of distilled water. However, with improved design of such a system, the operation and yield can be enhanced, and the present invention is directed to apparatus and method for providing an increase in the yield of distilled water from such a system while keeping the system relatively simple in construction.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,490,906 describes several embodiments of a fluid distillation system wherein each embodiment uses a primary container or chamber for water or fluid to be distilled and a secondary water container or chamber. The two chambers are adjacent to each other, and the secondary chamber cooperates with the primary chamber to direct water vapor generated in the system to travel to a reservoir for collection.
An example of such a fluid distillation apparatus was built under the instruction of Naisin Lee, an inventor herein, and is described in an updated manuscript authored by B. J. Huang and available from the National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, prior to the invention described and claimed herein. The distillation apparatus includes separate heating and condensing chambers where the vapor is condensed in a plurality of vertical chambers.
Thus, it remains desirable to provide further improved distillation apparatus and methods useful for water and other liquids. Such apparatus should preferably be compact, provide highly efficient distillation, i.e. minimum energy input per unit amount of distilled water produced, and be scalable from small units to large units. At least some of these objectives will be met by the inventions described hereinafter.